2014 NACIS Board of Directors Candidate Bios

Date posted: August 20, 2014

Voting for the 2014 NACIS Board of Directors will open soon. Please review the candidates and their bios!

VP-Elect (1 will be elected)

• Anthony Robinson – I serve as the Lead Faculty for Online Geospatial Education Programs for the John A. Dutton e-Education Institute and Assistant Director for the Department of Geography’s GeoVISTA research center at Penn State. In the first role, I direct Penn State’s online Master of GIS and GIS Certificate programs. For GeoVISTA, my research focuses on the science of interface and interaction design for geographic visualization software tools. I’ve developed interface design and usability assessment methods for integrating geographic visualization tools with work in domains such as epidemiology, crisis management, and homeland security. My recent research projects have focused on the design of map symbol standards, designing new systems to leverage geospatial information in social media, and eye-tracking to design new geovisualization techniques.In addition to leading curriculum development and management of Penn State’s online geospatial education programs, I’ve also developed and taught the first Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on Cartography, drawing more than 70,000 students from around the world.As an active member of NACIS since my first meeting in 2005 (attending every meeting since then), I have seen firsthand the value of the NACIS community. I was fortunate to be mentored by fellow NACIS cartographers early on in my career, and I am eager to contribute back to our community through service as NACIS Vice President Elect. I am particularly excited to develop initiatives that further enhance the value provided by member benefits, and to devise new ways to encourage people in related fields to join NACIS.”

Treasurer (1 will be elected)

• Jenny Marie Johnson – I am delighted to have had the opportunity to be of service to NACIS as treasurer for the last 4 years and look forward to serving for another term. A member of NACIS since 1998, I have previously served as a Board Member, Secretary, and President. I have enjoyed working with members of the Executive Committee and the Board, the Executive Directors, and the Business Manager to steward NACIS’ financial resources while supporting the organization’s mission to communicate about and promote new, creative, and best practices in cartography and cartographic information.I have been the Map and Geography Librarian and Associate Professor of Library Administration at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) since 1997 and held similar positions at the University of Washington (1988-1996) and Clark University (1985-1988). My BA in Geography and MS in Library Science are both from UIUC, and I am ABD in Geography at the University of Washington. I have been active in a number of other organizations besides NACIS including the Association of American Geographers (Chair, Archives and Association History Committee, 2003-2004) and the American Library Association Map & Geography Round Table (Secretary, 1989-1993; Assoc. Ed., Meridian, 1990-1994; Co-Chair, Map Collection Security Task Force, 2006-2008 and primary author “Map Collection Security Guidelines”). I also am currently serving as a member of the editorial board for Journal of Map and Geography Libraries.

Directors-at-Large (3 will be elected)

• Nat Case – Twenty-two years in map publishing with Hedberg Maps, Inc. showed me that our field is in constant flux. There is a lot of respect out there for our traditional bread and butter—building a well-designed, useful map—but my clients today at INCase, LLC also seek expertise using technologies that didn’t exist a few years ago. For me, NACIS is both an anchor to our shared cartographic tradition, and a source of information about the rapidly changing world of geographic technology. It’s this balance that I think makes the organization so valuable. I believe interactive design is conceptually pulling away from static map design, and forming its own domain. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I feel that as a field, and as practitioners, we have not fully come to grips with this gap. The result is a lot of cool new tools, but piecemeal understanding by older-timers like me of what to do with them. Clarifying the evolving state of mapping, and looking for practical ways to bring cartographers and coders together in shared conversations across that divide, is my biggest goal as a board member.

• Leo Dillon – Leo Dillon is the Chief of the Geographic Information Unit in the Office of the Geographer, U.S. Department of State. Not long after finishing his master’s degree from the Geography Department of the University of South Carolina, Leo joined the State Department as a cartographer in 1986. He specializes in foreign political geography, foreign geographic names, and international boundaries and sovereignty issues. Leo attended his first NACIS meeting in 1999, has been a member since 2008, and joined the NACIS Board in 2012. He has served on the U.S. National Committee to the International Cartographic Association (1995-1999), and he arranges the judging for the CaGIS Annual Map Design Competition. Leo is the State Department member to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, and chairman of the Board’s Foreign Names Committee.

• Matt Dooley – I’m an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls, where I teach classes in GIS and map design. My current work focuses on atlas creation and design, art and cartography, and the use of non-traditional media in mapping. I’ve been a member of NACIS for over twelve years and have attended ten annual meetings. I continue to serve as a member of the CP advisory board and organizer of the annual Student Dynamic Map Competition (since 2011). I look forward to the possibility of serving as a board member. ­

• Kristen Grady – Kristen Grady is a Cartographer and GIS Specialist currently working at the NYC Office of Emergency Management (NYC OEM). She has an MS-GISc from Lehman College, CUNY and a BA in Geography from Hunter College, CUNY. She has been enthusiastically designing maps “for fun” since the tender age of ten, but has been producing them for countless projects in both professional and academic environments for the past eight years. At OEM, Kristen is responsible for modernizing the agency’s map templates by improving their layout design, base map cartography, and branding.Before OEM, Kristen spent seven years in academia, publishing as both a student and a research employee. Her work has been in various academic journals, in a text book on geovisualization, and has been referenced in the New York Times, Newsweek, and the Atlantic Cities. Her personal cartographic interests are wide-ranging, but she is especially interested in emotion mapping, the practice of “seeing” good design, color, and using innovative methods to produce unique and interesting maps. Kristen’s most cherished moments are every chance she gets to transfer her ability to read maps to her ability to read and photograph the world from the windowseat, 36,000 feet up.Kristen has been a member of NACIS since 2008. If elected to the NACIS board, Kristen would bring both her passion for the art and science of mapping, as well as her comprehensive professional and academic mapping experience. She would most of all look forward to working and collaborating with some of the most well-regarded experts, professionals, and academics in the field to effectively steer the future course of mapping and cartography in its best possible direction.

• Alethea Steingisser – Alethea Steingisser is the cartographic production manager in the InfoGraphics Lab at the University of Oregon where she has worked since 2005. She serves as lead designer and production manager on major atlas projects including Archaeology and Landscape in the Mongolian Altai: An Atlas (2010), The Atlas of Yellowstone (2012), and The Atlas of Wildlife Migration: Wyoming’s Ungulates (in production). She works on design for all cartographic print projects in the Lab, and also assists on the campus mobile mapping efforts. Alethea is drawn to cartography because it combines her interests in art and science, and because the dynamic nature of the field requires continual learning.Her background in art and photography combined with her interest in earth sciences led Alethea to cartography at California State University, Northridge where she earned her Bachelor of Science in Geography in 2001. She followed up with a Master of Science in Geography in 2006 at the University of Oregon. As a student, Alethea took advantage of internship programs to learn from experienced cartographers. She worked as a cartographic intern for National Geographic Maps in 2001, and alongside Tom Patterson at the NPS Harper’s Ferry Center in 2005.Alethea attended her first NACIS meeting in Madison in 2006. She was excited to find such a welcoming organization whose members all share a passion for great cartography. She never fails to leave the annual meetings inspired and full of new ideas. Alethea is interested in extending her Board position to continue to contribute to the important work that NACIS does.

• Karla Turcios – Karla Turcios works in the industry designing GIS applications and software and advocating for the user. Previously she has worked in web strategy and operations at large membership organizations in Washington DC. She hopes to join the NACIS Board to contribute expertise in digital membership outreach, communications and branding for the development and growth of NACIS and the profession.

Student Board Member (1 will be elected)

• Lauren Tierney – Lauren Tierney is pursuing a master’s degree in Geography at the University of Oregon, and is a Graduate Research Assistant with the InfoGraphics Lab. Lauren began work with the InfoGraphics Lab as an undergraduate student cartographer over two years ago, and works with the atlas production team on the upcoming Atlas of Wildlife Migration: Wyoming’s Ungulates, aiding in the development of innovative cartographic products for representing wildlife data. Lauren also worked for Audubon Alaska as a Cartography/GIS intern in 2013, developing resource maps for the upcoming Ecological Atlas of Southeast Alaska. Lauren’s cartographic interests focus on developing maps and other information graphics that have the capability to reach out to multiple audiences and stakeholders, ranging from the general public to policy makers to scientists.Lauren’s graduate research focuses on how ungulates in Wyoming are impacted by energy development, and a component of this research will incorporate how to best visually represent results from spatially modeled data to aid policy makers, scientists, and conservation groups in managing critical wildlife habitats. Lauren has been a NACIS member since 2012, and is grateful for the potential opportunity to be a student representative of the NACIS Board of Directors. This position provides an important opportunity for both student representation on the Board and service to the NACIS community, and the profession of cartography.